In a painstaking process this alternate history storyline has been researched and is presented for your entertainment.
By using historical documents from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff we know exactly what the contingency plans were in the case of an expected Soviet attack in 1946.

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Book One World War Three 1946

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Saturday, March 23, 2013

Mark I

Bikini Atoll

South Pacific

07:23 hours

The fireball rose in the classic manner we all have come
to fear and admire. The stem of the mushroom and blast of light and heat,
followed by visible rings of concussion are a sight to behold on a movie screen.
You do not want to experience them in person. A handful of army personnel did
just that. The cap of the mushroom was reaching for the sky, pulsing with light
and energy, visible energy reaching out to destroy all in its path. The trouble
with this atomic explosion was that it was totally unexpected. It shocked the
thousands of spectators and scientists floating at a safe distance out in the
Pacific Ocean far from prying eyes but not far enough that the pens of hundreds
of reporters could be stopped.

Months before the world’s supply of polonium 210 ended up
in the lungs and organs of tens of thousands of American nuclear scientists, their
friends, families and other innocent victims. Much of the polonium was buried
six foot under along with the bodies of its victims in caskets lined with lead
and covered in dirt, flowers and tears. The American nuclear scientific
community was devastated and barely existed. New students were being taught by
more experienced students but the professors, were for the most part dead. They
had died an excruciatingly painful death that they had designed for others. Much like the ones their work had visited on
the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Their students had cobbled together enough material for 6
more atomic bombs. There were enough parts left in the assembly rooms and
nuclear storage areas to fashion even more atomic bombs. From these bits and pieces they had fashioned
one Mark I atomic bomb which was on its way to be dropped on Bikini Atoll in
the Pacific Ocean. In the target area were dozens of surplus ships. The test
had been originally scheduled for July, 1946. Then the war broke out. The plan
was code named Operation Crossroads.

The original operation was to prove or disprove theories
about the survivability of naval vessels during an atomic attack. The ships
were to be anchored and filled with live animals and supplies etc. that would
be studied after the explosions to determine if naval personnel and their ships
could function after being subjected to the power of atomic fission. Some saw
it as a test for the very survival of the US Navy and it’s relevance in a world
filled with atomic destruction.

The atoll’s inhabitants, some 167 Bikini islanders, were
convinced using prophecies of the bible, to leave their island paradise and
were moved out of harm’s way. The purpose of the tests had been altered and
many of the ships and the preparations that would have occurred were hastily
forgotten. Now the test was to be of the Mark I atomic bomb. The design was inherently dangerous and that
is why the Mark III had been designed using polonium 210 as a major part of the
weapon. The Mark III Tall Boy was considered much safer the Mark I.

Many things could go wrong with the Mark I and many
things could make it prematurely explode either conventionally or in an atomic
explosion. The Mark I was the bomb that everyone knew would work because of its
simplicity. The Mark III was somewhat of a question mark until Nagasaki.
Because of its significant improvement in safety the Mark III using polonium
210 was the bomb destined to fill America’s nuclear arsenal and not the much
more dangerous Mark I. That was until George Koval used the world’s supply of
polonium to sabotage the US atomic weapons program.

So the students of the original designers and engineers
who brought the world the Mark III atomic bomb had to improvise and the Mark I
was their answer… or so they thought. The reason the Mark I is so dangerous is
because any number of things can go catastrophically wrong. A simple electrical
short, getting hit by lightning, getting wet or a fire could set it off. No one
knows what happened aboard the bomber. The former student of Robert Oppenheim during
one of his rare semesters teaching at Caltech, had designed the trigger
mechanism. He had never assembled it before in earnest. This would be his first
attempt under simulated combat conditions and he apparently failed his test.

30 miles out from the target the B29 Silverplate exploded
in a nuclear fireball over the Pacific Ocean. If the Bikini test had not been
scheduled no one would have seen what happened. But they were 289 reporters
from the NATO countries that did see it happen. Although far enough away to not
suffer any immediate harm some were not yet prepared and did not have their special
glasses on and did suffer temporary effects to their eyes. Luckily, and by
design, no one or nothing was in the ingress path of the B29 Silverplate bomber
named Bockscar. No one but the crew and the assembly person were immediately
harmed. The nuclear program of the United States of America would not survive,
however.

The lethal list of US nuclear accidents become public
knowledge and included…

2 September 1944
Peter Bragg and Douglas Paul Meigs, two Manhattan Project chemists, were killed
when their attempt to unclog a tube in a uranium enrichment device led to an
explosion of radioactive uranium hexafluoride gas exploded at the Naval
Research Laboratory in Philadelphia, PA. The explosion ruptured nearby steam
pipes, leading to a gas and steam combination that bathed the men in a
scalding, radioactive, acidic cloud of gas which killed them a short while
later.

21 August 1945
Harry K.
Daghlian Jr.was killed
during the final stages of the Manhattan Project (undertaken at Los Alamos, New
Mexico to develop the first atomic bomb) from a radiation burst released when a
critical assembly of fissile material was accidentally brought together by
hand. The accident occurred during a procedure known as "tickling the
dragon's tail").

21 May 1946A critical nuclear accident occurred at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory
in New Mexico. Eight people were exposed to radiation, and one,Louis Slotin, died nine
days later of acute radiation sickness.

13 July 1946

The Soviet spy know as Delmar (George Koval) releases polonium 210 by timed explosions
during two separate gatherings of nuclear scientists and engineers in Dayton,
OH and Oak Ridge, TN. The world’s only supply of polonium kills hundreds of
America’s top scientists as well as killing and sickening tens of thousands of
others who come in contact with the scientists.

Add to this our latest nuclear fiasco and combine that
with the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the American public has had
enough and more importantly Harry Truman has had enough. All nuclear weapons
production ceases.

On a side note there will be 5 additional nuclear explosions
before the nuclear gene is put back into its bottle. As I write this I suspect
that the world will be a quite different place without the nuclear bomb. Quite
different indeed than it would have been if this height of insanity and evil
had run it’s course and been allowed to proliferate throughout the world. Only
time will tell if I am right or wrong. It would be interesting, to say the
least, if we had a parallel universe in which to compare the two paths. One now
decided upon in our universe and one filled with the unimaginable horror of
tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Perhaps enough to even destroy the world
itself.

2 comments:

I remember this joke from AH and armchair generals. This is a fucking joke of a story, but I'm impressed you've done this much. Poorly researched and involving a lot of scifi handwavium, but impressive in size if nothing else.